tive? True, there are women--he and Margaret
Pargeter had known many such--who regard what they call love as a
legitimate distraction; to them the ignoble, often sordid, shifts
involved in the pursuit of a secret intrigue are as the salt of life;
but this solution of their tragic problem would have been--or so
Vanderlyn would have sworn till four days ago--impossible to the woman
he loved, and this had added one more stone to the pedestal on which she
had been placed by him from the day they had first met.

And yet? Yet so inconsequent and so illogical is our poor human nature,
that she, the virtuous woman, had completely lacked the courage to break
with the man who loved her, even in those, the early friable days of
their passion. Nay more, whatever Peggy might believe, Vanderlyn was
well aware that the good, knowing all, would have called them wicked,
even if the wicked, equally well-informed, would have sneered at them as
absurdly good.

* * * * *

Vanderlyn wheeled abruptly round. He looked at the huge station clock,
and began walking quickly back, down the now peopled platform to the
ticket barrier. As he did so his eyes and mind, trained to note all that
was happening round him, together with an unconscious longing to escape
from the one absorbing thought, made him focus those of his
fellow-travellers who stood about him. They consisted for the most part
of provincial men of business, and of young officers in uniform, each
and all eager to prolong to the uttermost their golden moments in Paris;
more than one was engaged in taking an affectionate, deeply sentimental
farewell from a feminine companion who bore about her those significant
signs--the terribly pathetic, battered air of wear and tear--which set
apart, in our sane workaday world, the human plaything.

The sight of these leave-takings made the American's face flush darkly;
it was hateful to him to think that Mrs. Pargeter must suffer, even for
a few moments, the proximity of such women--of such men. He felt a
violent shrinking from the thought that any one of these gay, careless
young Frenchmen might conceivably know Peggy--if only by sight--as the
charming, "elegant" wife of Tom Pargeter, the well-known sportsman who
had done France the signal honour of establishing his racing stable at
Chantilly instead of at Newmarket! The thought that such an encounter
was within the bounds of possibility made Vanderlyn for a moment a